Why having a dry/self cater wedding because of money is bull

I'm curious about another "petty" thing, SoonToBeMrsSeriouslythinkswewon'trememberthefullusernamefrombefore: What do you have against the proper capitalization of the noun "I"?

Late to the party, but just putting in my 2 cents that even though my FH is in recovery we are properly hosting our guests and having an open bar because FH knows that you can't go through life never going near a place that serves alcohol. Seriously.

A shower is a pre-wedding event, therefore gifts given at said shower are wedding gifts, yes? And PLEASE tell me you are not inviting people to that shower that are not invited to your wedding.

Stbms- YOU are the one who mentioned "I don't want to go into debt for one day" which infers that dry wedding = cheaping out. Also, on a serious note, do you attend Al-Anon or AA with your FH, I recommend that you do. It will give you insight into his recovery. I know at some point in the recovery process they require family to sit down together in therapy so I would recommend Al-Anon if you are not already attending.

The real lolololol of all of this is that now STBMS needs advice on another thread after all the rude things she said to us.

Macy: I went over that point just last night.

Dry weddings are not against etiquette, no. Neither is not giving everyone a plus one, nor inviting SOs who aren't "serious," defined as either engaged, married, or cohabiting. It is perfectly fine etiquette wise to omit these things.

That said, it is also considered doing the MINIMUM to not be rude to your guests. That should never be anyone's goals. Do you go to work with the sole intention of doing the minimum you need to in order to get a paycheck? If so, then you deserve to be fired.

The goal everyone should have is to be a GOOD host, to go above and beyond the bare minimum. This includes things like hosting some type of alcohol bar, serving food at the reception, and providing plus ones to all guests. These are called niceties, and are what every wedding SHOULD include.

So yeah, you go ahead and host a wedding with the bare minimum. Let your guests be disappointed, and be the talk of the family for years to come. I prefer to sink my budget into treating my guests like royalty, and if that means hosting only 20-30 instead of 150 on a $15k budget, then guess what? I'm going to damn sure make that reception ALL about them, and make them talk about the wedding for years to come: remembering how freaking awesome it was and how much they were blown away by it!

When you hit F5 and the thread is still up

@Kathryn if your FH is in recovery than you must know that everyone is different in theirs. We go to places with alcohol all the time, he just doesnt want it at his event. Its really that simple.

@ELK only people at the shower will be people invited to the wedding. I understand that they are wedding gifts my whole point is i am not wanting gifts, expexting gifts, and really dont want every single guest to think they should get something for us. I really didnt want a shower but my SIL wouldn't let up on it. We arent doing bachelor/ette parties so FH said screw it and lets do "showers" with just a tiny group.

As for everyone else making comments on not making things private or pw protected: i didn't because I really didn't think i'd need to on a site like this. I didn't think people would seriously look up someone else's info. No need to belittle my technology intelligence. As for my I's not always being capitalized lol I have a keyboard on my phone that doesn't always auto-cap.

You don't seem to understand that a shower is all about gifts, that's what they're for, to shower the bride with gifts. If you TRULY don't want gifts, have a luncheon not a shower. Hide your registry.

Mom? Thank you for spending the last 30 years drilling etiquette in my head even when I was teenage rebelling and insisted you were overreacting... You were right all along mom. I love you mom.

We chose our venue because it included beer in the open bar and not just wine. That's how big a deal it is.

My FBIL got drunk and had words with me. He was nasty af. He can either be really fun as a drunk, or really angry. But guess what..... There will still be liquor at my wedding. If he gets out of control, FH has two other brothers that can escort him out. It's not my problem if he wants to act like a bafoon, because at the end of the day I'm still married.

I don't even get how self catering saves money unless you're serving your guests PB&J. Checking my old notes, I can see if FH and I had gone for the cheapest possible option in our area (we did not because our venue comes with catering, but otherwise this would have been a totally fine choice), we would have had a lovely buffet of ham, turkey, garden salad, potato salad, pasta salad, pickles, rolls and veggies for less than $17/pp. There's no way that after buying ingredients, enough cookware to prepare food in bulk, enough plates to serve it on, and factoring in enough work hours where I could be earning money to cook all this that I could prepare this kind of meal for less than that! $17/pp is a bargain compared to what self-catering would cost me!

Hell, my actual meal is coming in at around $47/pp (including apps, soup, buffet and open bar) and I still think that's a great deal for what we're getting!

@F2B I'm sure it's a demographic thing but the cheapest out here is like $60-$70 per person lol. And that's just for BBQ. You're lucky!!

ETA: but I agree, self catering the right way costs more. That's why people cut corners and everyone ends up with the shits.

@AlmostMrsE

We're definitely fortunate to have lots of affordable catering options, but even what you're quoting sounds totally reasonable for a nice meal. Not cheap, but cheap and reasonable are different things.

MrsF2B: I agree! When we looked locally, we could have had our catering done at the venue we looked at for about $15-$20/pp, and brought in our own alcohol and just used their bartenders. We were considering a guest list of about 150 then, so about $3000 for food alone. The menu consisted of two meats, two veggie sides, a roll, and brownies me cookies for dessert, as well as coffee, water, and tea.

Now, our food minimum is $125/pp for a lunchtime reception, but that $125 includes a cake, the actual lunch which will probably be soup, three entree options including a carving station, three sides, an assortment of breads, several hors dourves for cocktail hour, desserts, our cake, a full open bar package of top shelf alcohols and beers/wines, champagne toast, etc. it also gets is a huge dessert buffet with our choice of desserts that evening to watch the fireworks in a private viewing with any guests who want to join us, including the open bar, AND a brunch the next morning of typical breakfast foods and a juice bar, since we have actually asked the small number of guests we will be inviting, and nobody was interested in drinking before lunch, or we would have had mimosas also.

I think that we're getting an awesome deal, especially since we will definitely be upgrading our food packages further beyond the minimum expenditures, and our menu can consist of anything available on Disney's restaurants' menus, or anything we can provide a recipe for!

It's a huge difference in price, but for us, scaling down the guest list to provide more for a smaller number ensures that we get to provide our guests with the experience of a lifetime, and it will make our wedding unforgettable!

Religion or an early wedding time are definitely not the only exception to having a dry wedding. Many people simply do not like to drink or choose to live a sober life for personal reasons. It's not rude or tacky. This is the reason why the wedding industry is such a fucking mess these days because of so many catty whiny women posting about all these dumb ass rules you're supposed to follow. It's a joke. People are different. Their views are different. It's called acceptance.

Thanks for bringing this back... for your pointless rant.

@Hillary - it's called being a proper host. And for someone demanding acceptance, your comment about 'dumb a** rules' is quite judgy and hypocritical at best.

For the love of all things holy, let this thread die in peace.

Eta: just saw this was 3 days old!

Man I really typed out a knowledge bomb, too.

Fucking thread resurrections.

@ adria-

Good for you. I see so much negativity on here about dry weddings and such, i myself am having a dry wedding as our venue does not allow alcohol. But i have talked to many people who will be attending my wedding and not one of them have opted out or had negative things to say about it being dry, most of the responses when i mention that the wedding will be dry is thats ok we are still planning on having a blast. For a while i let all the comments on here get to me and then i realized that just because i can not afford everything from your wedding in mine does not mean that i do not deserve that special day. I have known mayby people who have down their own catering or pot luck anf still had a great wedding and there friends and family still had a blast.